Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones

finished.
    â€˜I’m not gay and I’m not lesbian,’ she repeats. ‘I know I look strange, a kind of hybrid, but I am a woman.’
    â€˜Where are your boobs then?’
    â€˜Here. Not very big ones, but I wear baggy shirts, as you can see.’
    Jonida is silent. Hana gives her time to digest the information.
    â€˜Now I don’t understand a thing. Starting with why you dress and act like a man. And how you managed to pass as a man, even though you were weird.’
    â€˜It’s a long story,’ Hana murmurs.
    It is such a long story. She’s already tired. To their right, a group of kids heads towards the big field where there’s an oval of well-trodden earth.
    â€˜They’re going to play baseball,’ Jonida explains. ‘Last year I was on the softball team but it was so boring I left. Now I play volleyball.’
    Some clumsy kid hits his leg with the bat instead of hitting the ball. The coach makes him lie down. They all huddle around him.
    â€˜What do you know about the mountains, Jonida?’
    Her niece thinks for a minute and then answers, pronouncing every word carefully. She knows that the mountains are really poor, that they’re always shooting each other, that there are blood vendettas and family feuds. Her parents don’t talk about it much. Lila says they’re American now and should live in the here and now. She also knows that a boy from Montenegro in eighth grade at school speaks Albanian, not Serbo-Croat, which means there are Albanians in Montenegro, but not that many. She knows she’d like to go there some day, to see it with her own eyes. She’d like to engage with her country, some day.
    â€˜Maybe my story’s not as complicated as it seems,’ Hana says.
    Her parents had both died in a bus accident while they were on their way to a wedding in the city. Those dirt roads were made for animals, not for trucks. Hana had been orphaned at the age of ten.
    â€˜Wait a minute,’ Jonida says. ‘You’re going too fast, you’re making it too … ’ She leaves the sentence hanging in the air. That’s how she takes after her father: her sentences made of air, hanging on invisible hooks. ‘What’s the death of your parents got to do with you deciding to be a man?’
    Hana scratches her forehead.
    â€˜It’s not that hard to be a man, you know?’ she says. ‘I swore never to get married. It’s a tradition that exists only in the north of the country. Let me explain: when there are no boys in a family, one of the girls swears to behave like a man and to remain a man for the rest of her life. From that moment on, she has to play all the roles and take over all the tasks of a man. That’s why I became the son my uncle never had. Uncle Gjergj was my father’s brother; he took me in and brought me up after my parents died.’
    â€˜I don’t get it.’
    â€˜I just gave you the basics.’
    â€˜I don’t get it. Why doesn’t the girl just do the men’s stuff without having to turn into a man? Why can’t she just do what she wants?’
    Jonida’s voice sounds alarmed. Hana feels guilty. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.
    â€˜So? Why can’t she?’ Jonida urges her on, realizing that her aunt is troubled by the question.
    â€˜Only a man can be the head of a family. Men are free to go where they like, to give orders, buy land, defend themselves, attack if need be, kill, or order someone else to be killed. Men get freedom and glory along with their duties. Women are left with obedience. And the girl I once was had a problem with obedience. That just about sums it up.’
    She says this looking Jonida straight in the eyes, her words like sharp pins, accusing. But it’s no good. Her niece can’t be blamed for anything, except maybe having made her bring forth this perverse fairytale.
    â€˜I was a girl until I was